


Remind Me I'm Home

by raendown



Series: NarutoCouplesWeek2018 [7]
Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 11:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13856457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: All shinobi are a little broken, that's just a sad fact of life. When Kakashi falls apart he needs someone who is broken just like him to help put the pieces back together again.





	Remind Me I'm Home

There were times when Kakashi wondered if it wouldn’t be better for him to simply step back and fade in to the shadows that constantly nipped at his heels. Usually those times came right after the nightmares, when he woke with screams muffled behind his clenched teeth and lightning cradled in his hand like precious, fragile death. He wished in those moments that he could rip the borrowed eye from his skull and, with it, the memories that would never fade.

He was tired of waking to the sound the ground had made as it collapsed over Obito’s body, the crunch and tear and quake as the earth opened its jaws and consumed the boy he hadn’t even known he cared for until mere hours before. The fact that Obito still lived, that their sensei had been able to dig him out, made little difference to him in those moments as the adrenaline of lingering fear bubbled through his veins. Kakashi still hated the memory of those few eternal seconds when he thought he had lost Obito forever and all he had been left with was a terrible empty rage inside his chest. If their sensei had not shown up when he did, Kakashi feared to guess what kind of broken monster he could have become – more so than he already was, anyway.

Of course, there were other terrible moments in his life which the Sharingan had cursed him to remember night after night, constantly reliving the pain and the grief until some days he wondered if that was all that kept him stitched together. Certainly nothing good came of the dreams when all he saw was Rin’s face lit up with the electric halo of his own jutsu. Sometimes he was subjected only to the absolute despair in her eyes as she threw her body towards his own. Other times his nightmares twisted the truth and he was forced to watch his own hand sliding effortlessly through her body, cutting bone and muscle and tissue as easily as he had cut down so many others.

Always on the days after revisiting such memories, Kakashi felt inevitably drawn to the memorial stone. He had long lost count of how many hours had been spent on his knees, eyes moving restlessly from side to side as he read through each and every name carved upon the monument in search of three in particular. ‘They’re not here’ he would tell himself desperately, yet still he felt compelled to check.

Today, like most days, it was Rin who found him first, always the earlier riser of his two teammates. With gentle hands she turned his face from the stone to look in to her eyes.

“We’re alive,” she told him firmly, as she always did. “We’re right here with you.”

On the days that her words made him tremble as he did then she took him straight to Obito and left them be, well aware that what happened next was not for her to see. It wasn’t that Kakashi didn’t trust her; there was nothing he would not trust Nohara Rin with. But there was something special about his bond with Obito that he had never managed to replicate with any other person in his life. There were parts of himself he could show to Obito that he could not show to others, even her. Luckily, she had never seemed offended by this.

They never turned on the lights, Obito and he, opting instead to curl up in the dark where their own eyes could not see themselves and the monsters in the dark felt more like old friends with familiar teeth worn down by time. Neither did either of them ever speak as Kakashi curled himself in to Obito’s blankets, as small as he could make himself in an unconscious effort to simply disappear from the world.

As much as he hated those first few minutes, a seemingly endless stretch of time in which he would lie alone underneath the covers and shake, he also knew that he needed them. With long practice Obito always seemed to be able to time it perfectly, only reaching out to him once he had gotten his head on straight enough to know that this was real, an actual human being touching him and not the ghost of a memory soaked in blood and painful potentials.

Kakashi nuzzled the hand which swept gently across his face, encouraging the other without words to join him in the narrow bed. He didn’t quite smile when his urgings were answered, didn’t truly have the strength to at the moment, but he did feel his muscles loosen ever so slightly as Obito’s arms slid around him and pulled him tight against a warm, solid body.

There was nowhere safer in this world to him than in Obito’s arms. Broken by the earth which had threatened to devour him and then rebuilt in doctor’s offices and laboratories, Obito was his beacon of perseverance. He was the hope to which Kakashi clung when his mind spiraled against his will, down and down and down in to nothing but darkness where he would almost believe all light had been lost but for the arms which held close and refused to let go.

Hours passed and Kakashi felt his limbs cramping from being held in a curled position for too long. He knew Obito’s poor limbs had to be feeling the strain of inactivity worse than him and yet he also knew that both of them had lasted much longer in the past, folding themselves in to tight spaces during missions. Still, as soon as he found the strength to move he very slowly turned himself around until his face was buried against a stark collarbone, nuzzling a blend of natural and prosthetic skin.

“Where did that stupid head of yours take you this time?” Obito asked him softly. Movement was the signal that he was allowed to speak again and he always took advantage of it right away.

“I put my hand through her chest,” Kakashi whispered back. “I could feel her heart thrumming against my arm as she bled out and she kept whispering my name…”

“That didn’t happen.”

“I know.” Nuzzling harder against Obito’s collar bone, Kakashi shivered. “Say it again.”

Obito chuckled a bit and squeezed him with both arms. “It didn’t happen. You saw her yourself when she brought you here. And woke me up from a perfectly restful sleep, I might add.”

Rather than being offended at the other for making light of the situation, all Kakashi did was crack his first wobbly smile of the day. Perhaps this is what made Obito safer than anyone else. Kakashi could always count on being treated just the same as if nothing were wrong and there was something incredibly comforting about that. As long as Obito wasn’t making a big deal out of it then he could trust that everything was going to be okay.

“Have you washed your hands yet?” he heard the other murmur in to his hair, words breaking on a yawn. Kakashi shook his head and Obito hummed. “Wanna shower?”

“Not yet.”

“Alright.”

While Obito drifted back off in to a light doze, Kakashi simply focused on breathing in the other’s scent of smoke and cinnamon. How he always managed to smell of cinnamon was a mystery but there was nothing that Kakashi associated more with the idea of ‘home’. He could vividly remember tracking an assassination target through the back alley behind a bakery once, catching the scent of cinnamon baked in to some kind of pie and thinking ‘I’m home’. Ridiculous, he knew, but the flash of warmth in his chest had cracked the cold shell in to which he always retreated during those kinds of missions and he had come home just that tiny sliver less broken than he normally would have, fewer pieces for the picking up.

Eventually even he had to admit that lying there in the dark any longer wouldn’t be healthy. Obito snorted when he was nudged and gave a pleased little murmur when Kakashi said he was up for taking a shower now. Not having washed his hands since he woke up, he wouldn’t feel truly better until he could cleanse himself of the imaginary blood that lingered from his recurring dream. Obito rubbed at his eyes sleepily as he rolled them both out of bed and insisted on shuffling towards the shower with both arms locked around Kakashi’s chest, face buried against the back of his neck.

“It’s hard to walk with you clinging like that,” Kakashi pointed out quietly.

“Meh. You’ll live.”

His smile was slightly bigger this time as, after they had made their way in to the bathroom and stripped off, he pushed Obito under the hot spray and stepped in after him only to worm his way in to another embrace.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“Don’t get all mushy on me,” Obito grumbled. “Both of us are allergic to emotions, remember? I don’t wanna break out in hives or anything.”

“Rin would probably dose you with something awful.”

“Woe for the days when even that would have sounded like a good time to me.”

Kakashi rolled his eyes and pulled away to raise a single brow at his boyfriend. Obito’s obsession with Rin in their younger days was something neither of them had ever let him live down, especially when they all grew up and he fell in love with Kakashi instead. No longer being the focus of his attention was both bittersweet and a giant relief for their friend.

“See, this is why I won’t play doctor with you.”

“Nah, you’re just a prude.”

Snorting softly in disbelief, Kakashi reached for the shampoo without separating them and poured a slight amount on top of his own head before upending it and deliberately emptying way too much on top of his partner’s hair. Obito did nothing but laugh and agitate the soap to make as many bubbles as possible. After working his hair in to three separate styles and making himself a bubble beard he finally allowed Kakashi to pull them both under the spray to rinse it out.

When Kakashi tried to push them back out again, however, he stood his ground.

“Sorry there’s a toll in this shower if you want out of the water.”

“Move,” Kakashi whined, unable to open his eyes and so settling for an exaggerated pout that he aimed slightly downwards to compensate for the difference in their heights. “I’m a poor, sad, broken man and you should be nice to me.”

“Nu-uh. Gotta pay the toll. One kiss, please.”

“Just one? You’re _cheap_.”

“Low price, high quality. That’s me!”

Were his eyes open he would have rolled them but they weren’t so Kakashi only nudged forward until he found his partner’s mouth and graced him with a chaste peck. Despite the light attitude he was keeping up, Obito was smart enough to know when the mood wasn’t right, when not to demand something a little more intimate. He took his chaste kiss and offered no complaints, stepping back so that both of their heads were out of the path of the spray.

He was also familiar with Kakashi’s rituals and how necessary they were to him, which is why he also said nothing as he reached for a cloth and a bar of soap. Kakashi stood still and simply watched as Obito soaped the cloth and proceeded to scrub his pale body from bottom to top for him, starting at the sole of each foot and working up both legs before covering the front of his torso and asking him to turn around so he could reach the back.

Seeing the pale white of his skin gradually turn a faint pink from both the heat and the cleansing helped Kakashi see that he was indeed _clean_. By the time Obito was finished he had stopped seeing blood on himself and started wondering what he had ever done in this life or any other to deserve people like Rin and Obito.

“Quit that,” his boyfriend grumbled as he gave himself a perfunctory wipe under each arm, obviously feeling too lazy to bother with another full body scrub.

“I’m not doing anything,” Kakashi protested.

“Don’t think I don’t know exactly where that dumb head of yours has gone.” Obito took his chin in a firm grip so the one good eye in each of their heads could meet. “You _do_ deserve us. We’re all a little fucked up around here so don’t you go getting all high and mighty, thinking your brand of fucked up is any better than mine, yeah?”

“You have a ridiculous way of trying to cheer me up. I hate that it works.”

Obito barked out a laugh. “You love that it works,” he countered. The smile that broke across Kakashi’s face this time was true and big and it felt like it might crack his skin but it also felt good, like being born again out of the nightmares which had finally released him in to Obito’s caring hands.

“I love _you_. Not sure why, though.”

“Ooh, that hurts you know!”

Kakashi ignored him and tilted his head back to catch the water again, simply enjoying the warmth of it. He knew exactly why he loved Obito and there was no doubt in him that his partner knew as well. They worked because they understood each other, recognized all the broken sharp edges inside and just how to fit them back together. There simply didn’t exist a glue that would keep him from flying apart a thousand times further but he knew that Obito would always be willing to help him pick up the pieces just once more, once more, and once more again.

Later they would make it out of this tiny apartment and find Rin to drag her out for lunch, yet another silent ‘thank you’ for her part in keeping him together. Obito was right; they were all a little fucking up in their own ways by the things they had gone through in their childhood – not to mention the things they had gone through _since_ childhood. But the light in the darkness was that no matter what happened the three of them would always be there for each other to come home to.

“Ready to get out?” he heard Obito ask him. Kakashi took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“I just want to stay a little longer,” he murmured back.

The same could be said of life. Sometimes the darkness in his mind was overwhelming and sometimes his own thoughts seemed against him, dragging him down in to places he wasn’t sure if he could ever crawl out of. But whenever he started to think about an ending, about leaving and never coming back, all he had to do was spend a little time with Obito and he remembered: he just wanted to stay a little longer.


End file.
